


don't leave me on this white cliff

by getmean



Category: Papillon (2018)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, King Arthur Legend of the Sword AU, M/M, Serious Injuries, Whump, Witchcraft, but also extremely making things up... as guy ritchie intended, dream magic and magic healing, extremely borrowing from arthurian legend, loyalty/devotion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27231574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: Henri has always shone so brightly that Louis had never in his life considered that something like this could happen. The same man who’d dragged himself through the Darklands and emerged with eyes bright for more. The same man who’d fought that final battle with the twisted demon that Vortigen had become, and won. Felled now by a guivre, on a trip so simple he’d brought with him only Gawain, and a skin of wine.
Relationships: Henri "Papillon" Charriere/Louis Dega
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	don't leave me on this white cliff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bearkare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearkare/gifts).



> this was a commission for bearkare, on tumblr :~) i really hope you like it, and that it ticks off your whole wishlist you had for the fic! and thank you for commissioning me, i loved writing it and working with you too, and i'm so glad we got to revisit this AU again!!

Henri has been fevering three nights, when Louis finally tells the men to ready the boat. 

“I can’t bring his temperature down,” he mutters, as he pushes through the throng at the doorway to the king’s chambers, making a beeline for his own room. The crowd parts uncertainly, dumbly; a herd of slow-moving animals. Louis pays them no mind. Calling back over his shoulder, he adds, “You need to find a woman who can sail!”

The grey morning light shines dully in the surfaces of the bottles lining the walls to Louis’ room. Green, blue, yellow-brown; fracturing off into dancing spots of light as Louis shifts them, searching for a pot of black ink. He rarely sleeps here any longer, and as a result his work space has begun to grow limbs, to spread itself across the room. He finds ink amongst his herbs, of all places, and then crosses the room to snatch his washbasin from its stand. The water sloshes over the lip, wets the cuff of his robe, sends Choupette clawing against the underside of Louis’ forearm in an attempt to stay dry. She’s as on edge as Louis is, settling himself and his bottle and his half-empty basin hurriedly at the window. The watery light from outside seems right for the day; a ceaseless grey drizzle.

Ink into water, enough to make it opaque, to make the surface a flat black mirror into which Louis’ own pale reflection blinks. Three days and three nights he hasn’t left Henri’s side. The man looking back at him from the water isn’t the same one who had so flippantly said goodbye to Henri, barely glancing up from his book as his king had kissed at his brow. 

He regrets it. There is so much to regret, and so little time to do it in. 

Louis’ room is dim and cold from not being occupied, from the fire not being kept alive in its grate. It sinks a hair lower as he begins to mutter over the basin of black water, the shadows that pool in the corners of the room beginning to draw closer, to turn deeper and blacker. Louis’ white-knuckled hands clutch at the rim of the basin, the rhythmic cadence of his spell emptying his mind, allowing for his intention to flow out and into the air. The black water shimmers. It shifts. And then Louis’ drawn, haggard reflection is replaced with that of a woman, looking far brighter than him. Light behind her head, dark hair loose around a handsome, angular face. Morgan Fey, her brows beetled in uncharacteristic concern.

“Is it time?” she asks. 

Louis wastes no time in questioning how she could know. Her second sight is sharp enough he’s sure she knew long ago of Henri’s injury. Before Louis, certainly. Perhaps even before the guivre had reared back to open him from armpit to hip with its needle teeth.

“He’s insensate,” Louis says. From beyond his room he can hear the rush of activity in the castle; the loud bellowing voices of Henri’s knights, footsteps on the flagstones. “I can’t break his fever.” And the unsaid, _I’m sure he will die._

Morgan’s eyelids dip, as if he’d spoken aloud. Her next words are measured, and settling to Louis’ frayed nerves. “I assume you have a boat readied.”

“Soon,” Louis answers. And then, “How will I know the way?” 

“Have a woman helm the boat, and it will be drawn to our shores,” Morgan says, and something in her expression tells Louis that she’s already several steps beyond their arrival. A distraction in her eyes; something faraway. He almost wants to ask her what she knows, or what she suspects, but there’s no time; someone is banging at his door, and the water in the bowl is black ink again as Louis’ concentration falters. There hasn’t been a minute in the last few days that hasn’t been filled with _something_ , be it hushed conversations over Henri’s unconscious form; talk of _how do we tell the kingdom?_ and _when will they know? When he dies?_ Or fielding various well-wishers and ill-wishers and snake oil salesmen from Camelot to Egypt, as if Louis is the man to speak to about these things, and not just a mage dug in too deep over his head. 

It means he crosses the room with more force than necessary, calling out an irritated, “What?” as he throws the heavy door open. Bedivere is on the other side, his mouth tight, and grave. Louis schools his expression; annoyance rearing above fear rearing above panic, over and over like the undulating of some many-headed creature. Bedivere must see it in his face, because his mouth softens, and his hand finds Louis’ shoulder.

“The boat is ready,” he murmurs, and Louis marvels at the way the man always seems able to exude such calm. Louis himself feels as though every hair on his body is standing on end, his body aching to return to Henri’s side.

“We’re going to Avalon,” Louis tells him, and Bedivere’s expression shifts. He claps Louis on the shoulder, just once, and steps back.

“I know,” he says, and starts down the hallway in the direction of Henri’s chambers, leaving Louis to scramble to catch up with his long strides. Their footsteps ring out over the flagstones, making his next words almost easy to miss; “The king has told me to cast Excalibur into the lake.”

“What?” Louis asks, and then, irritably, “Yes, of course he did. Are you going to do it?”

Bedivere’s tone is impassive. “I suppose so.”

Of course Henri would rise up from his days-long unconsciousness to get one last dramatic command in. The predictability of it would almost be comforting, if Louis was in any place to allow himself to be comforted. 

Henri’s chamber is silent, and airless despite its open windows, despite the brisk breeze fluttering the curtains half-drawn around Henri’s bed. It does little to shift the sharp astringent smell of the herbs Louis has been dressing Henri’s wound with. Nose-wrinkling in its green, medicinal stink. When he inhales, Louis tastes the sickbed; tastes the grave; tastes blood. In comparison, the cool stale air of his own room is sweet, and fragrant. 

The bed dwarfs Henri; makes him look smaller and more frail than he is, sunken and pale against the red bedsheets. Out of privacy, they’ve been keeping the curtains around the bed drawn, and the air feels hot when Louis pulls one back, as if his fever is shimmering the air above his body. He doesn’t stir when Louis lays the back of his hand to his clammy forehead. Even his eyes don’t dart beneath their closed lids; purple as though someone has blacked both his eyes. Louis pulls one back, and watches as Henri’s pupil shrinks. Glazed, sightless. Gently, Louis touches his knuckle to the broad sweep of Henri’s cheekbone, and then turns to Bedivere, lingering politely by the grate. 

“How long did he wake?” he asks. 

The low fire throws flickers of light on his face as he replies, “Barely a minute. He was slurring his words.”

Louis glances back at Henri, judging the pallor of him. Trying to imagine him awake enough to realise what’s happened to his body. Louis has pulled the linens up to his chin, despite his sweating; any lower and he begins to shiver. Any lower, and Louis has to look at the jagged black stitching that begins just below his right armpit. The bruising. In the heat of the moment, with Henri groaning and bleeding and the great red mouth of his wound opening and opening — Louis hadn’t had time to think of making his stitching attractive. After all, Gawain had simply buttoned Henri into his own coat, and rode like a demon back to Camelot; time was so precious once he arrived. 

Moving him is no small feat. To hold back the gawkers, Bedivere sets knights at every doorway, but even still there are too many eyes on the king as he is carried down through the castle and out into the woods. The light is grey, and sullen; glinting wetly off the pommel of the Sword, safe in its scabbard and held tightly in Bedivere’s hand. Louis can’t look at it, for what its return to the lake means for Henri. The finality of it. Instead, he clings closely to the litter, borne by Henri’s trusted few, watching the man’s face for any sign of discomfort, or change. The misty rain wets Louis’ hair, and whispers on the leaves, their precession hushed and silent as they wind down through the woods which border the shoreline. 

Each time Louis swallows, his throat sticks around his heart. If it wasn’t for the fact that Henri’s recovery, and this journey, hinges on his lucidity, Louis thinks he would’ve curled himself into a shuddering ball around Henri’s body long ago. It’s awful, to be reminded of the mortality of your loved ones. Louis’ not sure how many more reminders he can take.

Henri has always shone so brightly that Louis had never in his life considered that something like this could happen. The same man who’d dragged himself through the Darklands and emerged with eyes bright for more. The same man who’d fought that final battle with the twisted demon that Vortigen had become, and won. Felled now by a guivre, on a trip so simple he’d brought with him only Gawain, and a skin of wine. 

But every minute is precious; Louis simply can’t make time to feel the emotions crowding his head. They’ve reached the shore, and all eyes are on him once more. Without their king, Henri’s knights have been reduced to uncertain boys; lost without a voice to tell them where to go. It’s a strange feeling, to be that voice.

Their sailor is a black-eyed, skittish thing, watching curiously as Louis directs the knights to settle Henri gently into the boat, before stepping in himself. No word passes between them, not until they’re pushed off from the jetty and she turns to him, asking in a low voice, “How will I know the way?”

The sunlight sinks into her hair, and suddenly Louis feels a pulse of exhausted gratitude for the girl. Though the fight is not even close to being over, it’s a relief to know that he and Henri are on their way to the one place that could win the battle. “Just keep us moving forward,” he says, and sees her eyes flit as Choupette worms her way from Louis’ sleeve. “The boat will find its way.”

As they draw away from the shore, Louis hears a splash; a soft ripple of water. It makes him turn, hands splayed against Henri’s cheeks to keep him still as he cranes his neck to see the source of the sound. In the green shadows of the trees, he sees Bedivere, he sees Gawain; Lancelot, Percival, Galahad. And a woman’s hand, rising from the cool water, Henri’s sword clutched sure and shining in her fist. 

————

Avalon is a low, sleek shape rising out from the thick mist lying on the water’s surface. Rolling green hills, so lush and thickly forested that Louis can’t pick out where the buildings must be. Where the glades are, the famous orchards, the deep blue healing pools and dim, wet caverns where novices forage for herbs. Tucked away perhaps, hidden from them just as Avalon itself had shrouded itself in its mist. 

Louis finds himself captivated by it, and wishes he could share in it with someone who could understand. But Henri remains stubbornly motionless and pale in his lap. Every time Louis glances down at him, he feels a pulse of dread so strong he’s sure that dimly, Henri must feel it too. Maybe he would if he wasn’t toeing the line between death and life with such characteristic abandon.

Morgan and the women meet Louis on the shore; Morgan offering him a hand from the boat before the others begin to pull it onto the beach. The rasp of wet sand against the belly of it, the splash as their sailor jumps overboard into the shallows, and pushes it the rest of the way. 

In the narrow boat, swaddled in his furs, Henri already looks as though he’s ready for the pyre. It makes Louis feel pale, and he turns away until they have Henri lifted from the boat onto the stretcher, hefted between them. 

The air is sweet, and dewy. None of the brisk coldness that Camelot held when they left. Distantly, Louis misses the drizzle, as Morgan touches his elbow to draw his attention, and they begin their slow march up through the trees. 

Avalon is lush and verdant, a patchwork of thick forest and wide, flowering glades. No fencing, no clear sign of nature being corralled in any way; the island seems left to grow and bloom to its liking. Wildflowers on the air, and apple blossom, cool green water. Louis can hear the distinct noise of a distant waterfall; the rush of water over rocks. Every so often, their procession passes under a gap in the canopy, and warm golden light spills through onto the hoods of the mages, onto Henri’s upturned face. It touches him gently; the tops of his cheekbones, the ridge of his brow, and then drops away. Louis, watching Henri with a single-minded intensity, feels bereft in its absence. 

The parade feels funereal. And it’s not helped by the assembly of women waiting for them, as they come upon a low, sprawling castle set in deep amongst the apple trees. Silent, solemn, heads bowed as Henri passes beneath the raised portcullis and into the castle proper.

Louis, lingering back, shoots Morgan an inquisitive look. She only inclines her head, and leans in close to murmur, “We’ll take it from here, Louis.”

Taken-aback, he opens his mouth to protest, but the pressing silence of the inner walls of the castle seem to strangle his vocal cords. Louis is left gaping stupidly at Morgan’s back as they carry Henri into the bowels of the castle, before gathering himself together and hurrying after them, determined to not let himself be split from Henri in this brand new place. 

_I can’t leave him!_ he wants to shout at their retreating backs, footsteps muffled by the long carpets spread out on the flagstones. The interior of the castle is a far cry from Camelot; crumbling, mossy, as if the nature outside has found the last place it needs to reclaim. Louis has no time to muse over it. They pass through quickly, Louis hot on their heels, heart in his throat, a _wait!_ dying and being born again on his lips. He finds he just cannot shatter the silence. All he can do is keep pace with the twisting train of women, and crane his neck to keep track of Henri’s prone, pale figure amongst them. 

Their destination is a low, rambling cottage; just as seized by the forest as the castle itself. Probably a groundskeepers hut, once upon a time, but Louis quickly realises that this is to be Henri’s sickroom, as the stretcher and the mages, and Morgan herself, all file in. 

Louis is not allowed inside. Louis is left to pace like a man possessed; made highly strung by that silent, never-ending funeral march, and now strung up even higher by his dismissal. Each glance into the curved, merry windows of the cottage only serve to put him more on edge. Henri, his bruised chest open again. Black-hooded heads ducked over him, hands touching him inside and out. New blood on the sheets. The gnarled black thread of Louis’ stitches, tossed aside. Henri, conscious, staring blankly at the ceiling. Henri, unconscious again, and as grey as the stone walls. 

The last few days have been full of distraction. Louis hadn’t known it then, but he knows it now; cast out of the circle of women inside, cast out of any part in Henri’s recovery. It leaves him floundering, unsure, faced with a moment to try and take stock of everything that’s happened, but unable to even begin. Every time he does, the timeline jumps. Did it start when Lancelot burst into his chambers, wild-eyed and pale with the news on his lips? Or did it begin when he made the first stitch in Henri’s bleeding, gaping chest? The noise Henri had made, something choked and shocked as if stumbling on a ragged inhale. It had gotten so difficult to hold the needle for all the blood that his stitches had grown uglier, wilder. Louis had cried as he stitched Henri. He’s never been one to dish out pain. 

Now, Henri seems to be in so much of it that Louis’ wishes that he was unconscious once more. Inside, bottles and jars are being passed from hand to hand, the lick of flame in the grate being doused — Henri’s eyes rolling in his head. Louis doesn’t need magic to know that he’s dying. The vivid, mottled skin around his wound. Louis had hastily washed it, had stitched it, had dressed it, and is sure now that he had sewn infection in alongside it. Choupette’s claws are in his neck. His fingernails are in the window frame. He wants so badly to shift his consciousness into hers but some part of him knows he has to bear witness to this. To experience it fully. He owes Henri that, at least.

A small part of him wishes he and Henri were still tucked away in that little boat. Somewhere between Camelot and Avalon, mist had been so thick it had settled wet on their clothes, had given Henri’s face a dewy, healthy sheen. It had reminded Louis of their time together after Henri had emerged battered and bruised from the Darklands; stowed away beneath the deck with the slap of waves against the hull. Acting on their desire, on the feelings that Henri’s return had caused to bubble up and over. _I never go down without a fight,_ Henri had told him, that wry smile crinkling his eyes. Louis hopes to God he’s fighting his best fight of all, now. 

After a time, all that’s left is to surrender to emotion; that same emotion that Louis hasn’t found time for in days. And when he does, it swallows him, drags him deep down into terrified spirals. Will he survive Henri’s death? Will it hurt worse than this? Louis will be lopsided, forever an ill-fitting single of a long-lost pair. One does not love a man like Henri and move on afterwards. One does not love a man like Henri and ever recover. 

Morgan finds him just like that, hunched over his knees a few metres from the cottage, a short while later. “Don’t despair,” she says, and when Louis doesn’t react she adds, “He’s not dead yet.”

“Are they done?” he croaks, raising his face when Morgan comes to sit by his side. Right there on the grass, in her beautiful gown, close enough to his side to feel the warmth of her skin. Choupette peers curiously at her. Louis is embarrassed to be found in the throes of emotion; covertly, he wipes at his eyes, and swallows back against the thick tears in his throat.

“For now,” she says, and doesn’t expand. Louis doesn’t dare to push further. It’s not a feeling he’s accustomed to; this uselessness. It’s as frightening as it is unfamiliar. 

Quiet fills the space their words have left. The stone house at their backs feels like a dreadful void. Louis can’t bring himself to glance back; his mind playing the scenes he’d glimpsed inside there over and over. The blank pain on Henri’s face, like the hurt was so bad he’d simply left himself. “They unstitched him,” Louis murmurs, finding his voice. A glance at Morgan finds her watching the distant water, her expression thoughtful.

“He’s been poisoned,” she replies, as though that explains it. She glances at him, something curious and birdlike in the cock of her head. “Didn’t you know?”

A beat of shocked silence. “I didn’t consider it,” Louis admits, ashamed. “The blood scared me.”

“We’ve had to put him into a deep sleep,” she says, and Louis looks to her in alarm. “To slow his heart, stop the spread of the venom, to keep it at bay while he heals.” Morgan glances back to the sea, her expression easy, and open. “He’ll wake when he’s ready.”

Next to her, Louis feels small and ragged, and guilty, foolish, for overlooking the possibility of poison. It explains so much. The weeping wound, Henri’s stubborn, vicious fever. 

“God,” he breathes, and sinks his face into his palms. “I could’ve killed him.”

Morgan pats at his back, and together they sit in silence, listening to the birds sing overhead. Louis can’t tear his mind away from Henri; from his own reckless stupidity. There’s something sharp and jagged and lodged in his chest, only growing larger as the lick of anger at himself spreads. He feels it when he inhales. He feels it when his heart thumps. He doesn’t realise how hard he’s gritting his teeth until Morgan’s hand slides between his shoulder blades, and she murmurs, “I’m going to teach you how to make the balm that will heal his wound.”

“I’m no healer,” Louis insists, miserably. “My magic — I can craft dreams, work with animals, but the human body —” He makes a hopeless noise. “He’s better in your mages’ hands.”

“It must be you,” she says again, gently, and then draws herself to her feet. It leaves Louis to stare blankly up at her, feeling far too wrung out and exhausted to attempt to make sense of her words. Sensing this, she sticks a hand into the space between them, and pulls Louis to his feet. “You,” she says, looking deep into his eyes. “Because he needs to be healed by one who truly sees him. To me, to my apprentices, he is our king. But to you —” Here, she jabs at him, one long fingernail over the shrapnel of his heart. “He is just a man. And men heal better than kings.”

————

Louis doesn’t get to see Henri for a time. The women are still working on him, the cottage heavy with the smells of their medicines, heavy with the heat from the low fire in the grate. Louis only gets a glimpse; a glance between bowed black-hooded heads. It makes him feel all the more useless, despite Morgan’s words. All he wants is to soothe, to comfort, to dream — 

Choupette lingers in the rafters when Morgan draws Louis away, a tenuous connection to Henri while Morgan keeps him busy. She shows him how to make the salve; a potent-smelling mix of herbs to both heal and attack. For the wound, for the venom. It’s a far cry from the rudimentary skills he’s picked up over the years, so Louis tries hard to pay close attention. He knows Henri wouldn’t like strangers tending to him; seeing him in that small and shrunken state. He’s shown oleander root, sorgum seed, neem leaf, and works it with water, with arnica, with a generous amount of greasy beeswax to bind the salve. Whispering over it; chants for healing and banishing and relief. 

There’s little difference between spells and prayers, when desperation is the force behind them. 

When Louis returns to the cottage, night is already beginning to draw close around the room. It makes the mottled bruising around Henri’s wound seem somehow deeper, and darker, when Louis comes close to peer at it. The women had stitched him beautifully; far better than Louis’ own rushed job to keep the man from spilling his life out onto the floor. His hand hovers over it, gratitude a stiff, spiky feeling in him, tinged with Louis’ own disappointment in himself. _It’s not your skill_ , he tries to tell himself, settling the salve on bedside table before crossing the room to urge to flames in the grate higher. And yet, somehow, he is still supposed to take the lead in Henri’s recovery. It makes little sense, but not much has since Henri’s wounding. Louis feels so exhausted by it all that he can’t fight it; will do anything no matter how nonsensical, if at least it brings Henri back to him.

The flames curl up around the logs that Louis adds to the pile of embers; licking up over the mossy wood, sending it crackling and popping in the quiet room. Louis shuts his eyes, the fire imprinted on the insides of his lids as his body sways with exhaustion. _One good night of sleep,_ he thinks, some misguided plea to whatever might be watching over him. _And let me wake to something good._

Louis sleeps on a cot at Henri’s bedside, too afraid of the man’s beautiful new stitching to share his bed. He dreams of muffled voices, locked doors and empty rooms, but when he wakes its to sunlight, to find Henri’s fever had broken in the night.

—————

The smell of the salve seems to take root in Louis’ skin before long, with how frequent its applications are. It means he becomes steadily desensitised by the wicked healing wound curling along Henri’s torso, and with that, the whole process becomes a little easier. 

Without all the hubbub of Camelot, and with the support of Morgan and her mages, Louis begins to ease into his new routine. Waking with the dawn, eating with the women, returning back to the cottage to keep watch over Henri’s every twitch, every shallow breath. The pleasantly bitter smell of the salve. The strange peace that comes with sitting at Henri’s bedside, undisturbed.

Camelot seems very far away. Louis knows it won’t stay like that for long; already he feels the beginnings of his anxieties about the kingdom taking root. Questions of his future, the kingdom’s future, Henri’s future —

Louis is being tugged in so many directions that all he can do is sit and watch the rise and fall of Henri’s chest, just to remind himself of what is important. Not the kingdom. Not Henri’s seat, not what is happening back on the shores of Camelot. Not even his own vague fears of what will become of him without Henri. Just this. The fill and release of Henri’s lungs. He’s not without Henri yet.

On the seventh day, Louis casts diviner’s sage into the fire, and settles himself at Henri’s bedside to dream with him. It’s with a comforting kind of familiarity that the room begins to drop away as it fills with the smell of the sage; Louis feeling calm, loose-headed, ironed out and made comfortably flat by the herb. He inhales deeply, imagining the sage filling every corner of his lungs, his body becoming nothing more than an insensate smear in the air; something to catch the light and bend its shadows. Formless, shifting; more ghost than man. At his back, the fire blazes. Choupette is a warm glow of consciousness from her perch at his shoulder, his firm little anchor to the solid world. Henri is a dim throb, his light bruised and weak, his wound a great slice of light so bright that Louis can barely stand to feel it. Still, he turns his face toward it; lets the flame of all that hurt catch at his skin like a burn. 

Dreaming with Henri has long become second nature. Gone are the days of grappling into the man’s mind, poking and prodding for chinks in his armour, of cajoling his way inside. They exist together as one. Louis knows Henri’s mind more intimately than he even knows his own. Every peak and every valley; the darkness and the light. He knows his childhood, he knows his misspent youth, he knows how he himself looks through Henri’s eyes, and how Henri loves him so. Perhaps that’s what he misses the most from their dreaming together. Feeling so wrapped up in another person that eventually they both blend together; ink flowing into water. 

Their first attempt after so long does not go well. Louis is no longer viscous as ink; Henri no longer as welcoming as water. A resistance around Henri’s mind makes it difficult to enter; leaves Louis having to take several slow steps back through his process until he’s back at the most elementary. Where they began, more than a decade ago, dreaming together in that wet cave.

When he does finally slip inside, Louis wanders through a black forest for hours, his footsteps silent and his breath coming in clouds of white air. 

Not once does he find any sign of life.

————

It’s the forest most days. Sometimes the dock where Henri’s hands had bled into the black water, but mostly the forest. Empty, and eerily quiet; only the soundless fall of snow to break the bleak monotony. Louis loses hours to his wandering, unable to keep from coming back; convinced that with every dream that he enters, he will be sure to finally find the one where Henri exists. But all that greets him are dark trees, or dark water, and the soft rush of snow.

The forest becomes a mediative place for Louis. Empty, yes, but still imbued with an energy that Louis knows is Henri’s own; something warm and light and familiar. It’s comforting to be there. It serves as some small reminder that as long as Louis is there, and the trees are standing and the snow is falling, Henri is still alive and fighting. 

The snow crunches underfoot, as Louis steps through from the cottage and into the dream. Ink into still water. Henri’s forest has become more vivid, lately. A cold snap to the air, a fresh smell like snow-buried foliage. Louis can only take it for the positive sign he hopes it is. 

In the waking world, Henri begins to improve. His breathing comes easier, his stitches begin to look less inflamed the more Louis tends to his wounds with the salve. But still, the distant blankness of his dreams worry Louis. At night, he lies awake and watches the rise and fall of Henri’s chest, and speaks to him. Kneeled at the bedside, his brow pressed to Henri’s hand as he whispers over and over, _just let me see you. Let me see you to know that you’re still inside there._

But the forest remains stubbornly devoid of any life. The dock where Henri had turned from prince into king, deserted. Sometimes, Louis watches the bob of the little boat in the water, and wonders at where Henri could have possibly retreated to, if not here.

Louis tries hard to keep himself busy. He tends Henri’s wounds, he washes his body. The cottage quiet and still around them, full of warm golden light and the smell of lavender. On the sill sits a jug of it; ever-flowering, ever-fragrant. Otherwise the room is sparse, but functional. Pale wooden furniture, the grey brick of the fireplace, a rag rug to keep the chill from the floor. A wash stand, the slosh of water inside loud in the quiet room, as Louis passes a wet cloth through it, and over Henri’s bared chest. The mages had really stitched him so beautifully, the skin pink and new and flat. When his wound heals, it won’t be his first scar, but it’ll be his biggest. Louis treats it tenderly, like its anything but the horrific reminder it is. Henri’s guts had been inches from spilling from his body entirely. When Henri wakes, Louis knows he’ll be delighted by the size of it. 

He dumps the water out into the grass outside, and watches the play of sunlight on the distant waves for a while. Breathing in the fresh air, feeling the cool grass between his toes. Three weeks, they’ve been on Avalon. The real world feels like a distant dream.

By late afternoon, Louis is feeling dreamy by Henri’s side; full and warm from lunch, and uncharacteristically hopeful. Henri’s fingers had started twitching a few days ago, not long after sound and scent began to return to his forest world, and Louis finds he loves to test it. It’s his first sign of life since he’d fallen unconscious under Louis’ stitching, and the only thing so far that he physically reacts to. 

It goes like this: Louis, slipping the fingers of his right hand into the loose curl of Henri’s. Then, after a pause, comes a twitch. A shift, as if he’s trying to close his fingers around Louis’ own. The bunch of tendons in his wrist, in the back of his hand. And they never quite make it; it’s barely more than a ghost of the touch Louis misses so much, but it’s such incredible progress after weeks of nothing that Louis finds he can’t stop doing it. Pressing his fingers to Henri’s like one would tease a baby, a smile tugging at Louis’ mouth as Henri’s fingers flutter.

“He’s coming back,” Morgan had said, when Louis had shown her the movement. Her expression warm, and pleased, as she’d watched. It was then that Louis had realised that he was not as alone as he’d once thought. Morgan; the mages on Avalon; Henri’s knights and the people of Camelot. How could Henri not recover, with so much goodwill at his back?

Sitting there, feeling the smooth scar tissue running along the middle of Henri’s palms, Louis finds his mind wandering around the power of Henri’s people, around his kinghood; around the source of those old scars. The slick metal of the Sword, wetted by the son’s blood, buried dock-deep into the father. Those scars always felt like a physical mark of Henri’s status; a testament to his royal blood, but also to his resilience. That boy, shunted out into the black water. It makes no sense that he would falter here, at the peak of his rule, at the hands of some beast that should’ve been an easy slay. 

In the late afternoon sun they shine, old taut skin, the scars softened and comfortable but still there and hard to hide. Louis still remembers the way Henri had regarded them, all those years ago when he’d woken with the truth of his birth revealed to him after so long.

Henri’s story always makes Louis glad he was born to an average man, and an average woman; both none-the-wiser of their son’s abilities. He’s never had to peer inside himself and try and sort man from magic; he’s mage first, and man second. It’s true for most. But a king…Royal blood is a tricky thing; no king can decide to become a man, unless he’s prepared to slit his veins and drain that blood from himself.

Louis glances at the man’s face; near-serene against the pillows. Has Henri bled enough? The chambermaid had spent hours scrubbing the blood from the floor, after Louis had opened Henri’s coat and set his wound free. Louis can still see it, if he cares to; the fat black spots of it on the flagstones, the way it had saturated the sheets until they were shiny and soaking. The chambermaid ended up covering the stain with a rug. That’s the thing about castles; the old stone is always so thirsty.

Louis traces his fingertip from the shiny scar, to the bundle of green veins in Henri’s wrist. The way he sleeps is open, vulnerable; wrists and face turned up towards the sun. All the pale scars that litter him seeming to shine in the light that fans over him, urged into the room by those curved front windows. When Louis dreams, Henri’s wound is a brightness; sometimes the only illumination in the nighttime room. He wonders what is glowing out of it; whether it’s hurt, or something else. 

————

The day that Henri finally wakes is a bright one; a crispness to the air that clears Louis’ head, sends him out of the cottage for the first time in days. Despite the beauty of the island, he hasn’t had much opportunity to enjoy it, so he takes care to that morning. The glance of sunlight off the dewy grass, the mist rising in the glades as the sun takes over from the night. The smell of the soil as he pulls the herbs from it, rich and earthy, achingly solid. Louis has been living a pale imitation of life, clung to Henri’s body in that bright, static cottage. He only hopes that Henri can soon join him, and revel in the waking world once more.

When he returns, a basket full of the herbs needed for Henri’s balm in his hands, the fire has burned down to embers. Louis busies himself in the cottage, the only cure for his lonely mind; building the fire back up, rinsing the herbs of soil, and setting about working them into a paste as the room fills with light. His stomach is calling him to breakfast, but something keeps him from it. Choupette is restless today; flitting between the beams in the ceiling over Henri’s bed as though trying to drag Louis’ attention from his task.

“I’ll get some breakfast for us soon,” he tells her, absently. The small room is quiet and warm; Louis is happy to sit and work for a little while longer. 

And then, a voice. Croaky, and thin, but achingly familiar, sending a sharp bolt of shock through Louis’ body at the sound of it. “What’s for breakfast?” Henri rasps, and Louis is on his feet and at the man’s bedside before he can track the movement, mind blank with disbelief as he meets Henri’s wry, blue eyes. Bloodshot and glazed and tight with pain but still so unrecognisably full of _him_ that Louis feels tears prick at the back of his throat. 

“Henri,” Louis breathes, hands hovering over the man uncertainly, before he settles on cupping his sweet, thin face in his hands. His beard has grown in thickly while he lay in bed, pale blonde and scratchy against Louis’ palms. “Is that really you?” he asks, eyes roving over Henri’s face.

Henri, true to form, snorts. A slow spread of that familiar old smile, before he croaks, “You miss me, mage?” 

—————

Henri slips back into unconsciousness not long after his brief lucidity, but it’s a changed state of being. He wakes more often; is able to take food by mouth, and can follow along the thread of a conversation for a time. And now, when Louis dreams with him, Henri is there; a small, slumped figure, but still, he’s there. Silent, the first few times, only strong enough to be held, and spoken to, patted at like the delicate thing he has never been before. But as time creeps by and his moments of wakefulness in the real world grow more frequent, he becomes more whole in their dreams too. Strong enough to talk, to move around, the wound stretching the length of his body seeming to glow from beneath his clothes.

“I knew you were too stubborn to let the snake kill you,” Louis tells him, as they pace slowly through Henri’s snowy forest. Henri tires quickly, despite his improvements, so they spend more time together here than they do in the waking world. The smell of the cottage, the sage, mixes pleasantly with the fresh air of the dream world. Louis takes a deep lungful of it, just as Henri chuckles.

“They’re your creatures,” he says, looking wan but cheerful in the dim light that filters through the trees. “A snake could never kill me.”

“It came close,” Louis reminds him, and Henri slings his arm roughly around Louis’ shoulder, pulling him close to his side.

“Just one of many,” he says, robustly, and for a moment, Louis believes him. Watching him there in this strange world he’s created for himself, Louis really believes that this incident is no more than a bump in the so-far ragged road of Henri’s miraculous life. 

But the dream always ends. Louis always comes back to find Henri thin and weak from his poisoning, from his body’s task of stitching itself back together, and the belief crumbles ever so slightly. _This is different,_ he thinks, but doesn’t dare say. The two of them sit together in the bed, sharing paper-thin slices of apples from Avalon’s orchards, pretending that everything is alright.

Despite it all, Morgan is pleased by his progress. Louis tries to be too, but can’t help the jump of his mind forward; a compulsive urge to map the next few months and years, something he’s always been prone to. This Henri cannot rule. This Henri may never rule again. 

“Will he get better?” he asks Morgan, time after time. “Will he continue to improve?”

She gives him the same answer every time. “How far improved will be good enough for you?” 

She knows the answer just as well as he does. It’s a silent dismissal, a dim reminder of who they are healing. The man, not the king. It’s something Louis tries hard to keep at the front of his mind, but he’s only human; only a man.

“I miss the fresh air,” Henri murmurs, one evening, while Louis is steadily changing the dressings on his chest. When Louis glances at him, it’s to find Henri with his head twisted towards the open window, something wistful on his thin face. The smell of night blooming flowers is heavy on the air, the silence of the island so absolute that Louis can hear the rush of the nearby waterfalls. 

“When you feel up to it, we can go for a walk,” Louis replies, mildly, peeling back the dressing from Henri’s healing wound. The man winces at the tugging on his tender skin; glancing down at himself to watch Louis work. He’s characteristically fascinated by his wound, by the scar it’ll soon become, and likes to see it in between dressing changes; likes to wonder at how many inches in length it is, and how deep it had cut him down to. Louis always replies, _to fascia_ to which Henri always asks, _is that deep?_

“I wonder if that’ll ever happen,” he says, quietly, and Louis hums. The venom had taken its toll more than either of them really know, Louis thinks. Henri’s wound is well on its way to a scar by now. Unfortunately, the rest of him is yet to catch up.

“It’ll happen,” Louis says, before the pause stretches too long. He smooths a strip of clean fresh linen to the wound, and urges Henri forward so he can begin to wrap his torso. Henri groans at the shift, muscles tensing in his abdomen. By the time Louis lets him settle back into his pillows he’s pale, and sweating, and Louis murmurs, “Give it some time, and you’ll be back in Camelot giving Bedivere something else to worry about before long.”

Silence, at that. Louis tucks the end of the bandage under, and then brings his hand to Henri’s forehead, pushing his hair from his eyes. Then, gently, he kisses him, and Henri sighs into it. All the wound-up, pained tightness in his body shifting, and flowing away. When they part Henri’s eyes are dark, and soft, something vulnerable in the line of his mouth. It makes Louis ache, makes him want to hold him; tighter than he knows Henri can handle right now, and knowing that makes him ache more. How long will it be until they’re back to normal? Will there ever be a normal? The thought frightens him, and Henri’s next words only drive the needles of that feeling deeper. 

“What if I don’t want to go back to Camelot?” he asks, voice gruff, and it’s then that Louis knows how far he is from health. Henri without a kingdom is a stranger; be that the alleys of London or the wide span of Camelot. Louis swallows, and stares at him, nonplussed.

“You don’t want to?” It’s not a true question. Louis has been fearing this, and knows that Henri can tell. His brow crinkles, even as he closes his eyes and sinks back into the pillows. 

“You know it’s been wearing me out,” he murmurs, as Louis fusses with the bedsheets, tucking them up and over Henri’s bandaged chest. “And now this, I —” he shakes his head, and clears his throat. Louis waits, patient. Henri is as honest as a snake; it takes a lot to draw something genuine from him. “I don’t want to be remembered as a king who just…faded.”

In their youth, Henri used to tell Louis he will either die in battle or somewhere secret, alone. He would say those were the only two ways a king should go out. Louis used to scoff at the classic show of bravado, and brush him aside. It was easy to, when they were young and idealistic, and death was so far away. But now Henri is here, considerably weakened, somewhere secret — almost alone. It raises the hairs on the back of Louis’ neck. 

He sounds defeated. Louis has never heard that emotion in his voice before. Not when he was about to delve into the Darklands, not when he was about to go up against Vortigen one-on-one. There’s always been a steely vein of determination, and bravery, running low through every word. But the emotion is unrecognisable.

Henri goes easily into Louis’ touch, into hands cool-wet from the basin. Louis presses his palms to Henri’s forehead, his cheeks, the nape of his neck. The room washed out in the low orange shades of the dying fire, and still warm, still smelling of the lavender on the sill. Henri smells like skin and sweat when Louis sinks his nose into his hair. It’s grown long in the time he’d spent unconscious; dark blond and soft to the touch. Louis combs his fingers through it now, and murmurs, “You can’t think of anything but yourself,” into the crown of his head.

“Come here,” is all Henri says. And then, after a beat of hesitation from Louis, over-aware of Henri’s healing wound; “Please.”

The bed creaks as Louis sets his knee on the mattress, pulling his shoes off before settling into the pillows. It’s been a long time since they’ve slept in the same bed, but they both slip easily into their old positions despite it. Henri, his face to Louis’ neck; only now he’s stiffer, and thinner when Louis puts his arms around him, holding him carefully. Lavender, salt, the sharp smell of his salve. They haven’t been able to exist as themselves-together for far too long.

It’s easier to reach the mediative state needed for dreaming, wrapped up in the familiar warmth of Henri’s body. Louis doesn’t need the sage, he doesn’t need his spells. After all, it’s what Louis knows. Slipping first into dreams, and then into sleep; Henri’s mind as comfortable as a favourite leather glove. His weariness tastes like copper on Louis’ tongue. Together they tumble down and down, though what rushes up to meet them isn’t the dark snowy forest, or the blood-washed dock. 

It’s Camelot, but — no, it’s not. Each time Louis glances away, it becomes something else. The dripping caves where he had first delved into Henri’s mind. The creaking bowels of the ship where they had laid together and traded gentle kisses, Henri’s face too beat-up and bruised for anything harder. Camelot; Henri’s chambers, Louis’ chambers, the glance of sun off the Round Table and the dusty old smell of the castle’s flagstone passages. 

“Henri,” he says, warningly, and the scene settles, and becomes the windswept countryside they had journeyed through that very first day. Henri, bound on horseback, an endless source of irritation. Louis snorts when he recognises it, swinging his gaze around until it fetches up on Henri, sitting quietly by his side as if he’d always been there. 

Henri is grinning. Short hair tossed and tousled by the sharp breeze, bringing with it the smell of peat bog and heather. He looks hale; healthy. Red in his cheeks from the cold wind, his skin the familiar warm gold it takes on in the summer. Louis’ heart _aches_ at the sight of him, so hard that he presses his palm to his chest, afraid its lurch might toss it from his body entirely. 

“Too tired to talk,” Henri says, and glances out across the rolling hills, eyes squinted against the weak sun. “You remember this place?”

Louis leans his shoulder to Henri’s. “I remember it.” 

“You hated me.”

Louis laughs, surprised. The sound rings out over the hills. “I didn’t,” he says, and at Henri’s disbelieving eye-roll insists, “Really, I didn’t.”

“Whatever you say,” Henri murmurs, but that smile is still tugging at his mouth, his hand shifting to cover Louis’ own. 

A period of silence drops between them, as they both look out over the land; grey, and hard, but beautiful for it. The distant crash of steely waves to the shore, the cry of a hawk as it wheels above their heads. Choupette crosses from Louis’ shoulder to Henri’s, and Louis watches fondly as he rubs gently at her little head with his fingertip as she inches her way down his chest.

“I miss it, sometimes,” Henri says, out of the blue. Eyes still on the bat, her black-button eyes closed as he scratches at her. 

Louis blinks at him, nonplussed. “Here?”

“Not exactly,” Henri says, and then shrugs. “S’pose I miss who I was the last time I was here.”

The biting wind snaps at their clothes, sends Louis squinting against it as he tucks his face down against his shoulder. It’s easy to dredge those memories back up to the surface; no matter how much has passed between then and now, Louis still regards that year as the most extraordinary of his life. To compare that Henri to the one beside him now; Louis can see the exhaustion etched into his face. More than plain age, it’s the weight of a kingdom bowing his back. 

“I miss it too,” Louis says, simply, and Henri hums, chin to his chest as he looks down at Choupette in his palms. The watery sunlight runs over his scars like quicksilver. Something about seeing them dredges something up from deep inside Louis, has him asking, “Is that what you really want? You want to give up the crown?”

Henri huffs, a humourless noise. Stroking his thumbs over Choupette’s head and down her furry back. “I don’t know,” he says, and then again, quieter, “I don’t know.” 

And Louis waits, he doesn’t speak; there’s something honest welling up in Henri, he can see it in how badly the man is trying to let it free. The twist of his mouth, the wrinkle of his brow. Then, haltingly, he speaks. 

“I think a lot about the future,” he says, voice low. “It don’t seem like it. But I do. Spent all those years in London dreamin’ of the life I could make myself, if I just had a little more coin, or a few more men, or a little more goddamn muscle…” He makes a noise; something of a laugh. “And now I’m here and I can’t even hold a conversation if it ain’t in my head. I can’t walk across the room. I can’t barely eat, or drink, or —” His gaze slides to meet Louis’ own. “Nothin’ else that makes life good. Shit.” He turns his eyes back to his palms, to the bat, to his scars. “It ain’t that I don’t want Camelot, I just don’t think Camelot is gonna want me.”

“It wants you,” Louis says, immediately. “The people — they want you.” He doesn’t know how to express his belief in the effect the intentions of Henri’s people had on Henri’s recovering. That invisible outpouring of love from common man and knight alike. In those few days in which Henri had sweated and inched closer to the grave in that big bed of his, Louis had seen more tenderness from his battle-hardened men that he’d ever expected. Gawain, guilty, wet-eyed, at Louis’ every beck and call. Lancelot fixing the blankets around Henri’s body when a movement from him had upset them. Percival; big and kind and slow, lifting Henri gently from the pillows, so that Louis could wrap his torso. They all handled him like something precious, something to be cherished. To be so loved while in a state where gratitude can’t be expressed — it seems so alien to Louis, that Henri could think they wouldn’t want him back. 

The sun breaks through the clouds, sweeping the grey land in a hazy column of light. Fast-moving, with the sharp wind behind it. Louis takes Henri’s hand, and pulls it into his lap, tracing his fingers over Henri’s own as they watch the world brighten. The heather and gorse shift in the wind, bouncing little heads of dusky purple and hot yellow. The hawk has settled on a crumbling stone ruin, a few hundred yards away. Watching them closely.

“Hawks remind me of you,” Henri says, watching the bird right back. “Whenever I see a hawk, I know I’m in good company.”

Louis turns to look at it too, as the clouds shift over the heads, and the light washes over them. Gold sunlight like a circlet, caught in Henri’s cropped-close hair. Soft as a kiss on the planes of his face; making him handsome, shining, larger-than-life. And Louis is reminded of every time he’s been beaten down, and every time he’s gotten back up. Slice of the Sword through his hands, neck to the block waiting for the fall of the executioner’s ax. The Darklands, the fights in the streets of London, facing down Vortigen on that whistling mountaintop. Every quest and every battle, every time the crown has weighed too heavy on his head, as it does now. _Nothing can keep me down for long_ , breathed out close and affectionate into their air between their mouths. He might not be king right now, but he can be again. There’s no doubt in Louis’ mind.

As they watch, the hawk takes flight from its perch, a spray of gritty stones in its wake. Henri makes a sound of pleasure at it, his hand tightening around Louis’ as they watch it wheel through the air above them, until it shrinks to a black dot against the sullen grey sky. Still the sunlight beams through, pushing though with a determination that feels almost familiar. Henri’s hand in Louis’ hand, themselves-together once again. And for a time, Louis forgets the long road ahead of them. His world narrows to companionable silence, Henri’s head on his shoulder, the thrum of blood in his wrist and the rush of waves on that distant beach. 

Idly, Henri asks, “Who would I be without it?” He doesn’t need to say what; Louis has been turning the same question over in his mind for weeks. The kingdom, the crown, the blood. 

Louis turns his face in Henri’s hair; the familiar smell of him. “I suppose that’s up to us to find out,” he murmurs, quietly, as if there’s a soul in the world besides them to hear it.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! :~)


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